This segment was taped at the American Stock Exchange, which offers trading across a full range of equities, options and exchange-traded funds.

Kevin Kerr is the president and founder of Kerr Trading International and publisher of the Resource Trader alert. He is a veteran commodities trader and one of the nation's top commodity analysts. He spoke recently with HAI anchor Mike Norman.

Mike Norman, anchor, HardAssetsInvestor.com [Norman]: [In the first part of this interview,] Kevin, we spoke about these big bullish trends in agricultural commodity markets. How do investors play this if they want to? I know there's been the advent of many new ETFs or exchange-traded funds. What are some other ways for investors to get on board this trend?

Kevin Kerr, president and founder, Kerr Trading International [Kerr]: Those are good ways, the ETFs, and I think you'll see more of those come on board as prices continue to climb. Also in the equities, we don't want to forget that, like in the energy market, we buy the refiners and we buy the drillers and the people who make the equipment to play off of the oil price; you can do the same in agriculture. We can buy the people that make the fertilizer or the tractor. Farmers are going to have to be upgrading their equipment. This industry is growing so those stocks will likely do well. Some of those have had quite a run lately, so you've got to pick and choose, but there is some opportunity there as well.

Norman: But there aren't companies or publicly traded companies, or perhaps there are, that specifically are involved, let's say, in the process of growing corn or growing soy beans?

Kerr: No, it would be a company like Monsanto ... and Cargill, [which] is a private company ... so any of these companies that are involved in seed or fertilizer. They're as close as you're going to get, the ones that are public. Again, you're going to see new vehicles like the ETFs come on; I know it for sure. And you're getting a lot more hedge funds that are rolling because they are very interested in the agricultural markets right now.

Norman: Let's talk about that, because that's a question I ask everybody who comes on this show. In addition to the whole biofuels theme in the case of agriculture, commodities in general now are viewed as a new asset class - a valid asset class - by large institutions. We're talking about not just hedge funds, but also pension funds and endowments. They're putting money into commodities as never before. This is also contributing to the price increases.

Kerr: Absolutely, in all the commodities. We've seen just a huge influx of new people involved in the commodities markets. It's because it's electronic too. It's global now. I was in Italy giving a speech to people about trading corn. This is something I would never have done three or four years ago. The bottom line is it's a global market.

Norman: Maybe wheat, because they make pasta.

Kerr: Yeah, but now they can actually trade it 24 hours a day, when I'm asleep here. It's truly a global market. It's growing exponentially. I think it's good. I also think it's bad. The reason I think it's bad is it's added a lot of volatility. We're getting a lot more volume but we seem to also get a lot more volatility. We never used to see a five- or six-dollar-a-day moves in crude, and now a two- or three-dollar move wouldn't be uncommon. We see that on a regular basis.

Norman: Is that because of the involvement of the small investor and electronic trading together?

Kerr: The market participants would tell you that the more people involved in the market, you'll have less volatility, but I'm not seeing that right now. We're seeing big money that's been flowing into things like gold and oil and also the agriculturals, and I certainly think it's adding to the volatility, not subtracting from it.

Norman: Finally, let's talk a little bit about ... I think you can't leave this out of the picture ... demand coming from developing and emerging countries like China. [There's] enormous new demand as they modernize. As the standard of living rises, they want more food, higher-quality food. That's all part of the equation, right?

Kerr: Yeah, and the difference between China and the U.S. [is that] one asset we do have in the U.S. is farmland. We have plenty of it, but we're running out now that we're growing all this extra corn. But China has not that much. So much of the land is un-farmable. It's un-arable. It's just not able to grow anything or it's on a hill. So there's just not a lot of farmland. They're looking in Africa now, South America. So the bottom line is that they're running out of room to grow food and they've got a lot more people than we do.

Norman: They absolutely do. You don't have to be a mathematician to understand that's a factor in prices.

Kerr: And as you pointed out, their quality of life is ratcheting up, so they're wanting these better commodities. They've got more money in their pockets, so now they grab for more of the share of the commodity because they've got money now ... our money.

Norman: Now would you say that these trends are cyclical in nature, or is this more of a secular thing? In other words, is it going to endure over a long period of time?

Kerr: I was saying that we are in a 15-year bull market. I've heard of all different scenarios. I think we're actually a little further along now because I think it's really moved faster. So I'd say we're probably in like a seven- or eight-year thing, and we're probably up to the fourth or fifth year. There are going to be opportunities. The thing I love about commodities [is that] we can short them just as easily as we can go long. So we'll be making money in these ranges, and that's all I want for the whole year, is a nice range, and by the end, it will be higher.

Norman: All right, thank you Kevin. There you have it: a boom in agricultural commodity prices; plenty of opportunity for everybody.

Make sure to check Part I of HardAssestsInvestor.com's interview with Kevin Kerr